I always viewed Jet Li's The One as the single worst film in my lifetime, but I now have to reconsider. When the woman who introduced the film said it was in the vein of Tarkowsky I got interested. Not many films are made these days with that kind of poetic nature and visual invention. Then the film started. With a sunrise. The biggest cliché in cinema? Not when you stretch it for six minutes. It is then supposed to be poetic. Then we meet the dullest family in the history of cinema, accompanied by the steady rhythm of a clock. A cliché? Yes, but you see, this is different because it stretches the dullness and boredom to the extremely painful level, which made me relate to the man when he appeared to commit suicide. But in the end he just turned off the clock. This is symbolism, because like all modern festival art films, this movie is about regret, the need to turn time back, God and bladibla. The lead character is supposedly torn because he has found a woman who makes him feel the way he felt for his wife when he was younger, as if he was at one with nature. Cue eternal shots of fields, trees, the usual. When we meet him and his lover together, there is nothing to suggest even a remote sense of passion, as their dry tongues interlock for en eternity against poetic lens flare while the actors mechanically eat each other as if it was a meal their grandma had cooked and they just didn't have the heart to turn down. But only after he has explained the nature of their relationship in quasi-philosophical terms to his friend, who works as a mechanic, which means we have to watch them fix a car for about ten minutes in a traveling shot that reminds me of the first year of film school. For most of the rest of the movie the guy wanders around, looks at the sun, the snow and so on, and has the same discussion with a group of dispassionate confidantes. I won't spoil the blatantly obvious "story"-developments (they generally happen about an hour after they would in a Movie of the Week), but suffice to say it ends with a sunset that dares you not to scream at the screen. At least The One didn't think it was a Bergman movie. And I suddenly realized why cinema is seen as dying right now. For the most part we only have two alternatives. Mindless but well paced entertainment, and fortune-cookie philosophy 101 homework movies determined to show "exotic people" as if anyone who leads a different life than most of us are passionless, empty-eyed people "at one" with nature. As an alternative I'd recommend a long train ride, where you spend most of the time looking at the passing scenery and how the light hits it, while once in a while glancing at at the faces of people who wish it was over all ready. Don't bring a book. It will be too much like living.
Review of Silent Light
